The concept of the
mind has appeared as a
powerful idea that has inspired lively debate among
philosophers,
psychologists,
doctors and even
physicists. While this debate has been interesting, none of these groups have reached a
consensus on exactly what the mind should be defined as. Thus, for the purposes of this essay, I have chosen to define the mind as
the sum of all of the conscious and subconscious mental activity in the forms of internal images, sounds, feelings, smells and tastes that make up an individuals subjective experience of the world. I have chosen this definition for several reasons. The word “mind” itself belongs to a class of nouns termed
nominalizations, which are nouns that in fact describe a process rather than a
static thing. The definition I have provided avoids this
Aristotelian “
thingness” about the mind and allows us more
precise discussion. Second, I believe this definition avoids placing the concept of “mind” into any particular school of thought that may bias the discussion. Given this definition of mind, I propose that it can be neither proven nor disproven that
the mind is embedded in the brain. For the purpose of this discussion, "Is the mind embedded in the brain?", I will take that to mean that the existence of mind is dependent upon the brain, and that the mind is localized within the brain.
While it goes without saying that the mind and brain most certainly appear as related, there exists little evidence that the mind and the brain describe the same phenomena. As yet, it can not be proven scientifically that the mind resides locally in the brain of individuals rather than as a non-local phenomenon that merely manifests itself through the nervous system. Eastern mystics call the idea of the non-locality of the mind a “universal consciousness” and some theoretical quantum physicists support this idea as
well. Jung’s theories on the collective unconscious and particularly on synchronicity seem to support this view as well. What then of the biological explanation that the mind resides within the brain? The biological explanation makes an assumption that I do not believe: namely that the action of neurons is solely responsible for what we perceive as existence. I do agree that the biological view describes in a very elegant way the mechanisms of the nervous system, but it fails to explain how and why these mechanisms result in our unique experience of the world how we experience it. Where, for example, does consciousness reside in the brain and how does the firing of neurons result in our subjective experience? Further, if the task of experiencing the world is distributed among many different neurons that each has a localized function, how do we sum all of these localized tasks into a continuous and ongoing experience without entertaining the idea of the mind as non-local?
Neuroscience tells us that the brain transduces energy from the outside world into neural impulses. At first, this appears to explain some of the above questions, however upon closer examination we are left with more questions than answers. Neuroscience provides a very complex and detailed picture of the structure of the process of sensing, but fails to address the content. We know, for example, that red light has a particular structure in terms of its wavelength and its effect on certain types of neurons: this is the structure. What we do not know and can not prove is whether my subjective experience of red (qualia) corresponds objectively with someone else’s experience of red: our subjective experience of red is the content, and falls under my definition of mind. Could it be then that the brain provides the structure, while the mind provides the content? If so, then the concept of mind is inherently untestable scientifically, however this may merely be a problem in the definition. The study of the transduction of sound waves into neural impulses reveals another mystery. Certain frequencies of sounds are detected by certain neurons that fire in response to the sound. Other sound frequencies are detected by the rate that the neurons fire. This information is transmitted to the auditory cortex, but how do those impulses get translated into my experience of a symphony? And how might my experience of a symphony differ from somebody else with essentially the same brain structure? How is the information in the neuron decoded into my experience and integrated with the rest of my ongoing experience?
This brings me to my next point. If the mind is not embedded in the brain, then how does the administration of drugs that act on the brain appear to affect the mind? This issue can be resolved in several ways and still remain consistent with my thesis. If the mind is non-local as I discussed earlier, then the apparent effects of drugs on the mind can be explained by the drug’s effect on the mechanism by which the mind manifests itself through the brain. A useful analogy here would be to consider a dam built on a river where the water is the mind and the river valley is the brain. When the dam is built, it changes the structure of the river valley, and interferes with the movement of the water. Another way to approach this issue is again the structure vs. content. Drugs change the physical structure of the operation of the brain and neurotransmitters, if only temporarily. This can be fairly easily predicted in most cases. The content of the drug experience, however, can only be put into generalized categories. When a person ingests LSD we know that they will have some sort of sensory distortions, yet we cannot predict precisely what those sensory distortions will be or what specific things they may hallucinate. Again, this is a difference in structure and content that I find relevant.
One very interesting thing is that the number of neurons containing sense information going forward in the brain is only one-tenth the number of neurons pointing in the other direction. This also ties in with the visual blind spot that we rarely notice. This is just some of the evidence that our experience of the world is a creative process.
I am ending this essay with more questions that I had when I started. The only thing I can be reasonably certain about is that whether the mind is embedded in the brain or not probably depends on your definition of mind. I don’t think this question will be easily resolved until further advances are made in brain research, quantum mechanics (local vs. non-local phenomenon), and a consensus on a scientifically testable concept of mind is reached.
See also: philosphy of mind, Rene Descartes, subjectivism, general semantics
© 2002 Martin Kretzmann